Founder and CEO at Millennial servicesa dedicated call center service provider.
getty
Inbound marketing focuses on building and maintaining customer relationships. Investing in customers attracts leads to your site. It encourages them to choose your products and services, keeps them happy and promotes loyalty to your brand. Content and social media are incredibly important for building inbound momentum. However, it is important to put just as much effort into customer service. Once you get people’s attention, do something great to help them.
Hiring the right people is a great place to start, but even the best employees need company-specific training. Customer service team training should include both project knowledge and people-connection techniques.
The power of a good customer service team
Content, messaging and the quality of your product all contribute to bringing in leads. Good customer service keeps your customers coming back to your business. When customers have a question about the product or need help solving a problem, their interaction with your customer service team will have a major impact on how they feel about your brand in the future.
Retain customers cheaper than getting a new one. By the way, returning customers often spend more. If a customer’s order is late or they’re struggling to get started with the product, the customer service representative they talk to can mean the difference between creating a loyal customer and chasing a frustrated customer away. former customer. Customers now have higher standards, with more than 60% willing to change companies after one bad experience. However, 70% of customers whose problems are handled well, are willing to shop with that company again. This shows how important your customer service team can be to retention.
Business leaders want to discuss with teams where they think customer service processes need improvement. Open discussions are crucial. If your business is new or rapidly expanding, detailed product and service information is all it takes to start developing a strong customer service strategy and team.
As the CEO of an outsourcing company, I’ve noticed that business leaders often worry that an outsourced customer service team won’t provide the great customer service they’re looking for. By taking advantage of the larger capacity outsourcing offerings, companies can provide even better customer service than with an in-house team alone.
If you decide to outsource this work, find a vendor that measures KPIs to help you track success and identify areas for improvement. I suggest avoiding a provider that relies too heavily on technology. Bots, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are great, but I’ve found they work best when balanced with a team of well-trained people. Customer service is about people.
Having a full customer service team gives agents the time they need to go beyond customer communication. This includes offering personalized follow-up check-ins after a customer purchases your product, minimizing wait times on the phone or live chat, and giving the customer service team more time and energy to handle complaints.
Customer Care Team Training for empathy
From deep product knowledge to the flexibility to make decisions, members of the customer service team need a lot of resources to do a good job. It’s important to train your team, both early on when they join your company and on a routine basis to ensure their skills stay fresh. Empathy is one essential skill for customer service representatives. The ability to connect with customers and genuinely want them to have a positive experience with your product sets the right tone for any customer interaction.
The world has changed dramatically in the last two years, and between shipping delays and rising prices, customers are more likely to be angry or frustrated when talking to customer service. Empathy training can help your customer service team deal with customers’ problems and find creative ways to use your product to provide solutions in their lives or business.
Considering the position of the customer
Establishing a genuine relationship with customers makes it easier to come to a solution together. However, this is not obvious to everyone. It’s difficult to teach empathy directly, but there are some strategies your team can use to develop this critical skill. The most obvious is to let your team members put themselves in the customer’s shoes. Discuss times when they made a purchase and something went wrong. They need to think about how they felt during the experience and how their customer service communication helped or didn’t help.
Other strategies to increase empathy are more gradual. Encourage employees to broaden their perspectives by talking to different people and reading novels, biographies, or self-help books featuring real-life characters or people who have had different life experiences. This helps people develop a sense of understanding for others, even if they cannot relate to them directly.
Role-play exercises
Customer care training should include role-playing exercises. These exercises are a great way to practice active listening and other good communication techniques that will help your team build relationships with customers. No matter how empathetic a sales representative is, it can be difficult to convey his concern to a frustrated customer. Role-playing with colleagues gives them the chance to work out in advance how to respond to common problems. Ask experienced team members to share real examples. Their colleagues will benefit from their expertise and see how customer frustration plays out specifically with your product.
Listening techniques
The final method is the “listen, confirm, resolve, thank plan,” an effective listening technique for customer service representatives. When a rep has to speak to several angry customers in a row, it’s hard to remain patient and empathetic. Having such a formula in mind will help remind your reps to listen and make the customer feel heard. Acknowledging and repeating the customer’s problem before moving on to a solution can go a long way in providing a positive experience and creating a loyal customer.
A successful inbound strategy depends on a great customer service team. Well-trained, outsourced customer service can be just as effective as hiring an in-house team. Finally, well-trained, empathetic customer support services can help your business retain customers.
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